The Sony 7600 series page

About 30 years ago, the first model of this series basically defined
pocketbook-sized shortwave portables. Since then, they have enjoyed high
popularity not only among travellers but also among ordinary SWLs looking for
a first "serious" set (such as yours truly). While declining sales in Western
countries (where shortwave does not play much of a role these days) and the
rise of Chinese manufacturers with decently-performing, much less expensive
sets may mean that the still-current ICF-SW7600GR becomes the very last model,
the "7600s" will always be known as high-quality, well-made products.

On these pages you can find information about the receivers themselves,
modifications, impressions etc. You'll probably have to wait a bit until all
the receiver images are loaded.

You'd like to add something? Writing to me
doesn't hurt. (BTW, thanks to the nice people who have done so in the past!) If
you've got any questions, please keep in mind that I don't know everything on
any receiver either, having to rely on whatever information I can gather from
the web, service manuals (if present) or other sources.

Note: A reader from Japan kindly informed me that these and other more
upscale SONY shortwave sets are actually developed and manufactured at
Towada Audio. In fact, external
sourcing like this actually seems to be very common in the Japanese consumer
electronics industry.

Please note: In order to enjoy the most comfortable
navigation, Seamonkey users are advised to turn on
the site navigation bar "as needed" unless it's already present; ditto for the
page bar in Opera 7 or later. Equivalent functionality is provided by
extensions / add-ons for
Firefox (Link
Widgets) and (if you must use it by all means)
IE (<LINK>-Bar).
Want to know more
about LINK?

What about some history?

It all started in the mid-'70s when shortwave listening grew very popular in
Japan and elsewhere. Someone at SONY figured that a truly compact shortwave set
might be useful for, say, today's world traveler who wants to stay in touch
with what's going on. In those days, a radio was considered portable if it
fitted under an airplane seat, and most shortwave sets were quite large.

The first effort was the model ICF-7600,
introduced about 1977, worldwide
about 1978, which finally became available in Germany as the ICF-7600W ca.
1980. This pocketbook-sized set (18 x 12 x 3.2 cm), weighing in at little more
than a pound, was a single conversion analog (of course) receiver covering five
major shortwave bands along with mediumwave and FM. Its shortwave reception was
not all that outstanding but no worse than in much larger sets (and MW and FM
weren't bad at all), besides the widely spread frequency scales allowed fairly
good readout accuracy in spite of relatively widely spaced markings. The
ICF-7600 proved to be very successful, and soon after the competition brought
out a number of similar radios.

By the way the ICF-7600(W) had kind of an AM/FM "companion",
the model ICF-7500(W). This was a peculiar set which allowed using just the
radio part, minus the loudspeaker, with headphones – an idea which resurfaced
a few years later in the SRF-80(W) radio Walkman. Both are collectibles
today.

In 1982/1983, the ICF-7600(W) was replaced with the
ICF-7600A(W), a model
looking very similar but sporting a lot of major and minor improvements under
the hood. It now used a dual conversion concept on shortwave (albeit an
unconventional one that isn't as resistant to overload as "normal" ones) and
received a total of seven shortwave bands with increased band coverage.
Selectivity and sensitivity on mediumwave and shortwave also were very good,
along with decent overload rejection. The effective tone control and nice audio
section and speaker were taken over from the previous model, and power
consumption remained low. All in all, this was a winner for Sony and became
very popular around the world, with tourists, journalists and SWLs alike. It
was soon challenged by "me too" models from other companies with usually better
feature sets and sometimes better, sometimes worse performance (the Panasonic
RF-B50 and Toshiba RP-F11 a.k.a. Kenwood R-11 come to mind, see
The competition), but the '7600A
remained the most popular choice. Actually it still isn't half bad even today,
although it does have its limits in terms of dynamic range and band coverage.

Sony ICF-7600A (the international model)

But Sony wasn't done yet. The 1983 IFA (Internationale
Funkausstellung, the international consumer electronics fair in Germany) saw
the presentation of a new model that truly made an impact: the
ICF-7600D (called ICF-2002 in North America
to reduce grey imports).

While being pretty much the same size as prior models, this was a
full-blown PLL synthesized dual conversion set using a high first IF and
FET-based balanced first mixer, with a continuous reception range from longwave
153 kHz right up to 29995 kHz shortwave (models sold in Germany had to make do
without the frequencies above 26100 kHz and more importantly without the
antenna input, a case for a mod) plus FM,
and all the goodies like a whopping ten station memories, direct frequency
input, and a clock with timer function. Shortwave could be tuned in 5 kHz with
analog fine tuning being available, and as a first, even SSB reception was
possible. Back then, this was absolutely unheard of anywhere near this kind of
size. At the same time, reception performance also was quite respectable.
All this, of course, reflected in pricing – the new set was over 50% more
expensive than the 7600A. Nonetheless, these things sold like hotcakes
(ultimately about half a million) and got rave reviews. Since the 7600A
remained in production until 1987, Sony now had two real winners.

This radio, being ahead of its time, was built for quite a few years; it saw
an internal update by 1984 to rectify a few issues, and in 1987 the model
ICF-7600DS (NA: ICF-2003) was presented, which was pretty much the same as an
updated ICF-7600D with different colors.

Meanwhile, the trend towards yet smaller sets continued – the
1984/85 ICF-4900 shrank a concept much like the ICF-7600A's to approximately
half size, thanks to the then-new CX20091 all-in-one IC: 144 x 76 x 24.5 mm and
less than 250 grams with batteries.

In 1987, another dual conversion travel portable was
introduced: the ICF-7600DA (NA: ICF-7700).
This was an entirely different radio with digital tuning and a tuning knob using
an imitation of an analog tuning dial. However, the performance of this radio
was quite poor (it did, however, receive a number of bugfixes until early 1988).
The type number similar to the ICF-7600DS caused quite a bit of confusion, and
the similar pricing didn't help matters.

In 1987/88, the shrinkage trend culminated (for now) in the
ICF-SW1, pretty much an ICF-7600D (minus SSB and fine tuning) squeezed into 118
x 71 x 24 mm. With the matching active antenna, it did not need to hide from
its larger cousins in terms of reception performance.

In 1988, the ICF-7600A was retired in favor of the
ICF-7601,
a slightly cheaper model that noneless had a larger reception range – it
covered the shortwave bands from 60m up to 13m (dual conversion), 120m to 75m
(or longwave in the L version), MW and FM. Like the ICF-7600A, this was a dual
conversion design with a 1st IF of 10.7 MHz. A flip-out stand was now featured,
if only a small one. This model wasn't unpopular either, having good MW/SW
selectivity and a wide range of shortwave bands, but ultimately couldn't quite
match the raw performance and build quality of its predecessor.

Soon after, in 1989, the small dual conversion analogs were
shrunk further – the micro version of the ICF-7601 was the ICF-SW20, now
measuring only 116.5 x 72.5 x 28 mm and weighing little more than 200 grams.

Finally, in 1990, the ICF-7600DS was followed by the new model
ICF-SW7600 (Sony had begun to call the
receivers with shortwave focus ICF-SWxxxx in 1988). This receiver still tuned in
5 kHz steps on shortwave and had a total of 10 presets, but now allowed
selecting two different BFO insertion frequencies for preferred upper or lower
sideband reception in SSB, did away with the separate clock and backup batteries
and had a flip-out stand on the back. (The German version now had full coverage
up to 30 MHz, but it still didn't have the EXT ANT jack.) Internally, it marks
the transition to surface mount parts (first seen in the 1985 AIR-7 and
ICF-PRO70 sets) and higher integration. Shortwave reception was better than with
the ICF-7600DS (less noise, improved SSB reception, same very good selectivity)
and FM stereo could be received (even if FM performance wasn't outstanding
otherwise). Thus it still sold in fairly high quantities (more than 300000
samples in 4 years), if not in the same ones as its predecessors given that
there was some stiff competition around now (think Panasonic RF-B65, RF-B45 or
Sangean ATS-808).

The new model was less expensive (albeit at the cost of a reduced set of
accessories), finally had 1 kHz steps and offered a feature only found on more
expensive receivers: synchronous detection. Although the sync detector is not
as good as on more expensive radios (it adds some noise of its own, does not
reduce selective fading all that much ["more successful at maintaining the
volume"] and does not lock on weak carriers), it is very useful, especially in
situations with heavy interference (like with tropical band stations). The
receiver is very quiet but suffers from insufficient image rejection (if no
more so than the predecessor) and unexciting audio quality.
Somewhat over 300000 samples were produced until 2000, the highest S/N
reported was in the 326xxx range.
For a while, there also was a model called ICF-SW7600GS, which was simply
a bundle of an ICF-SW7600G with the AN-LP1 active loop antenna.

In 2001, the current member of the line was presented, called
ICF-SW7600GR. It features a number of
smaller improvements over the older model, the most important ones being more
memories that are safe from power failure, two clocks with temporary clock
display during reception, and a variable attenuator. Reception is virtually
unchanged, the usual sales price hasn't changed much either, but audio is
somewhat improved. After September 11, 2001, sales of this and other shortwave
sets picked up, with the 200000 sample mark finally being cracked in 2008. The
7600GR is one of the few models remaining in Sony's diminished shortwave product
line.

(If this image has a background that is quite clearly not
white, you've got a bogus monitor color profile. Use sRGB then.)

The ICF-SW7600GR remained on sale long enough to be able to
legally drive in some countries. Finally, in 2018 it was discontinued along
with the ICF-SW35, leaving no shortwave receivers in the lineup save for two
domestic market models. Presumably sales had been slow for years. Meanwhile,
the author of these pages lives in RFI hell.

The analog series is characterized by fully analog tuning
(big surprise, eh?) and comprises single conversion and dual conversion designs,
the latter with a 1st IF of 10.7 MHz, the IF typically used for FM broadcast
reception.

The digital series is characterized by use of frequency
synthesis with a PLL coupled with microprocessor control, and thus the usual
comfort functions like presets, a clock, etc. With no exception, main tuning is
done with keys, coupled with an analog fine tuning control for SSB reception
and in some cases (namely, in those models with 5 kHz main tuning steps) fine
tuning of AM stations. They're dual conversion designs with a 1st IF around 55
MHz.

Unique receivers are those that don't fit into any previous
sub-series. In this case, it's the "hybrid" digital/analog ICF-7600DA/ICF-7700.